Atkins Diet Weekly Menu – January 8th

One of the things I have been typically bad at doing in my low carb lifestyle is making menus. I am usually a “cook whatever recipe or idea sounds good tonight” type planner for meals. About the only time, I start planning ahead of time for meals is when I know I have a recipe video coming up. I make sure I have the food in the house for the recipe, and generally know when my nightly calendar will allow for me to cook and film that recipe video. For shopping, I shop the immediate specials of the particular grocery store and purchase a few common staples every week — eggs, cream, cheese, butter, leafy vegetables, etc. — that I know I’ll need no matter what hits my fancy during the week. It is not particularly efficient and leads to some grocery store visits during the week for missing ingredients.

Well my daughter starting the Atkins lifestyle to primarily get healthier and drop the last 5-10 pounds has forced me to change those cooking habits. I have made a number of late night meals at midnight for her to eat the next day at school. She does have the benefit I don’t have of being able to reheat things at school in the home econ kitchens, so the lunch meals do reflect that opportunity. If I was doing my menus for the same time period, my lunches would feature more 1/4# cheeseburgers sans buns, tomatoes, and pickles than reheated leftovers. For the moment, this has been working pretty well. Having only 5-10 pounds to lose, she has moved on to OWL phase, but still primarily eats near Induction level of carbs.

This is not a perfect menu as there may be some additions during the week or slight changes. I purchased an eggplant tonight, so Friday we may have eggplant parmesan instead of the planned low carb waffles.